Founded: 1912
Incorporated: 1934
NAIC: 454113 Mail-Order Houses; 454111 Electronic Shopping; 448140 Family Clothing Stores; 451110 Sporting Goods Stores
SIC: 5961 Catalog & Mail-Order Houses; 5651 Family Clothing Stores; 5941 Sporting Goods & Bicycle Shops
L.L. Bean, Inc., is a leading retailer of outdoor gear and apparel, selling its products online, via catalogs, and through its growing array of retail bricks-and-mortar stores. The L.L. Bean catalogs, a tradition since the company's founding, have historically been the engine that drives company sales; in the early 21st century, however, online orders have accounted for a growing portion of sales. Overall, about 80 percent of the company's sales are generated through the e-commerce and catalog channels. The catalogs, about 60 of which are produced each year, as well as the web site offer more than 21,000 different items, most tied to the pursuit of outdoor, active lifestyles. L.L. Bean enjoys a high reputation, among its corporate peers as well as its customers, for order fulfillment. For the solitary fisherman or the busy baby boomer, the name L.L. Bean also stands for quality, value, and enduring style, so much so that each year nearly three million visitors make pilgrimages to the company's original retail store, in Freeport, Maine, to soak up the Bean ambiance and the Bean bargains. Adjacent to this flagship 160,000-square-foot store are the L.L. Bean Hunting and Fishing Store, the L.L. Bean Bike, Boat & Ski Store, as well as a factory outlet offering discount prices on discontinued, irregular, and overstocked items. Since 2000, a handful of additional full-price retail stores have opened up in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York, and L.L. Bean also operates around a dozen more factory outlets along the East Coast. Another dozen retail outlets located in Japan are supported by a Japanese-language e-commerce web site.
Early 20th-Century Origins: The Maine Hunting Shoe
The founder of the company was a 40-year-old Maine outdoorsman named Leon Leonwood Bean. Orphaned at age 12, Bean began to develop his entrepreneurial skills by doing odd jobs and by selling soap door-to-door. He also earned money by trapping. "Although he was a natural salesman," according to Robert B. Pile in Top Entrepreneurs and Their Businesses, "he was never really satisfied in one job and drifted about from place to place." Finally, Bean went to work for his older brother, Otho, in a Freeport dry goods store. There Bean sold overalls to manual laborers and earned $12 a week. His true love, however, was hunting and fishing in the Maine woods and streams, a love that would eventually lead to the development of one of the most popular and enduring products in American retailing.
Like most outdoorsmen in the early 1900s, Bean frequently suffered the problem of hiking with waterlogged boots. In 1912 he decided to add leather tops to a pair of ordinary rubber boots. He sought the services of a local shoemaker, and, after a few pairs of the boots had been sewn together, he penned a circular entitled "The Maine Hunting Shoe." A model of early direct-mail advertising, the circular began: "Outside of your gun, nothing is so important to your outfit as your foot-wear. You cannot expect success hunting deer or moose if your feet are not properly dressed." Bean mailed the letter to sportsmen from outside Maine who had purchased Maine hunting licenses and touted his original shoe as "light as a moccasin, with the protection of a heavy hunting boot." He priced his product at $3.50 per pair and, to further entice his fellow hunters, offered a money-back guarantee.
Bean's marketing was flawless; however, his product was not. Of the 100 pairs of his Maine Hunting Shoes that were ordered and sent, 90 were returned because the tops had separated from the bottoms. Rather than give up his fledgling enterprise, though, Bean honored his guarantee and then borrowed $400 to redesign and perfect his boots (Bean also perfected his guarantee, making it unconditional and, in fact, the essence of Bean's customer service culture through the present day). His determination to satisfy himself and his customers paid off after he traveled to Boston to meet with representatives of the U.S. Rubber Company, who were able to fulfill his original design intentions. Bean redoubled his boot-making efforts and his commitment to the mail-order business, fortuitously in the same year that the U.S. Post Office began its parcel post service.
Bean's revamped footwear quickly became successful, and he soon expanded his marketing push into other states. A Fortune "Hall of Fame" article records that when another of Bean's brothers, Guy, became the town postmaster, Bean established his factory directly over the post office and facilitated the mailing process with a system of chutes and elevators. "He never lost his touch. Knowing that hunters from out of state often drove through Freeport in the middle of the night on their way to some hunting camp in the far wilds, Bean opened for business 24 hours a day. Night customers found a doorbell and a sign that read: 'Push once a minute until clerk appears.'"
Adding Retail Store, Expanding Product Line
Bean's name spread during the 1920s, because of word-of-mouth as well as print advertising and the founder's continuing innovations. In 1920 Bean opened a showroom store adjacent to his workshop, to accommodate the demands of visitors. In 1922 Bean reengineered the Maine Hunting Shoe by adding a split backstay to help eliminate chafing. Within two years, sales rose to $135,000 annually. The company received welcome publicity in the early 1920s when its boots were used to outfit arctic expeditions led by Admiral Donald MacMillan. In 1925 the first full-sized catalog was mailed, featuring nonshoe apparel and sporting gear for the first time.
The catalog expanded again in 1927, adding fishing and camping equipment to the Bean line. Typical of the ad copy was the inducement: "It is no longer necessary for you to experiment with hundreds of flies to determine the few that will catch fish. We have done that experimenting for you." For years, in fact, Bean insisted on personally testing all of the products the company planned to sell. Perhaps this is why the Maine Hunting Shoe, as innovative as it was, proved to be simply the first in a string of classic Bean products, such as the Maine Guide Shirt, the Chamois Cloth Shirt, Bean Moccasins, the Zipper Duffle Bag, and Bean Cork Decoys. (The company also included high-quality non-Bean products, beginning with the Hudson Bay "Point" Blanket in 1927.)
During the Great Depression era, the mail-order house managed not only to survive but to thrive, passing the million-dollar mark in sales in 1937. According to Pile, "Bean invested nearly every dollar he made back into the business, with his eye on building it for the long term." The secret to L.L. Bean's success during these growth years was a threefold emphasis on quality products, fair pricing, and creating a timeless appeal to the Bean catalogs, which always featured paintings of outdoor Maine scenes and stories that underscored the strong link between Bean products and an outdoor lifestyle. In addition, Leon Leonwood instituted a postage-paid policy, further strengthening the company's reputation for catering to the customer. By the post-World War II era, both Beans, the man and the company, had become living legends. Moreover, the list of Bean customers was fast becoming a collection of legends itself, with Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Dempsey, John Wayne, and Ted Williams alternately figuring prominently.
In 1951 Bean, still at the helm as he approached 80, announced that the Freeport retail store would begin operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, proclaiming, "We have thrown away the keys to the place." Another important innovation during this decade was the introduction in 1954 of a women's department. Despite the famous Bean name, as the company entered the 1960s its sales volume was not as high as might have been expected. Pile asserts that "dark clouds loomed on the horizon as [Bean] became older. ... No longer did sales increase 25 percent or more each year; dollar volume actually began to flatten. Merchandise in the catalog and in the store was no longer up-to-the-minute and, even worse, orders were being slowly filled by part-time people who had little interest in doing the best possible job." The downhill course the company appeared to be on was steepened by the inception of other sports specialty marketers. This course was altered, however, following Bean's death in 1967 at the age of 94, when ownership of the company fell to the Bean heirs. Only one was interested in management: Leon A. Gorman, grandson of the founder.
Modernization and Substantial Growth
Gorman was first hired by the company in 1960. In 1967 he became president of a languishing business, with $3.5 million in annual sales and $65,000 in profits. Strong leadership and redirection were required and Gorman filled the need. His first decisions included expanding the advertising budget and demographic target group and making prices more competitive. He refrained from seeking growth through more retail outlets for fear of jeopardizing the catalog business. During his first full year as president, sales rose to nearly $5 million. The company had gotten back on track just in time to enjoy a huge recreation boom that was spreading across the country. By 1975 sales had reached $30 million and the company was employing more than 400 people. During the 1970s, the computerization of many business segments and the relocation of manufacturing to a new building further speeded the company's growth. In 1974 the company built near Freeport a 110,000-square-foot distribution center, which was expanded to 310,000 square feet in 1979.
Several trends contributed to Bean's substantial growth in the 1980s. Among them was the accidental, or perhaps inevitable, affiliation of the Bean label with prep culture and clothing. According to Milton Moskowitz, Lisa Birnbach's Official Preppy Handbook, tongue-in-cheek or not in its declaration of the Bean store as "nothing less than prep mecca," helped fuel a 42 percent rise in 1981 sales. A new health and fitness boom contributed to Bean's growth, as well as a surge in mail-order shopping. First-time Bean customers, nearly 70 percent of whom were women, increased rapidly during the 1980s. The company bolstered its retail space late in the decade, expanding the Freeport store by 40,000 square feet in 1989 and opening the first factory store in North Conway, New Hampshire, in 1988.
As the 1990s approached, however, the country experienced a serious recession; sales slowed, returns rose, and a 30 percent postal increase loomed on the horizon. For a time, Bean suffered along with the other major catalog marketers and was forced to lay off 10 percent of its hourly and salaried workforce over a two-year period. In a 1992 Forbes article, Phyllis Berman placed the problem in a more serious context: "What went wrong? To some extent L.L. Bean is the victim of success. A whole generation is already outfitted with L.L. Bean leisurewear and camping equipment. Its durable, high quality clothing lines have spawned many imitators. Meanwhile, similar items turn up in discount stores. ... Bean carried relatively few styles and introduced new products slowly. But today's trend-conscious and jaded consumers want variety and novelty."
Berman, who continued by questioning Gorman's management decisions, may have been premature in her analysis; by the end of 1992, the company's 80th anniversary, sales had risen by 18 percent to $743 million. The same year, L.L. Bean opened its first store in Japan, a ripe market that also contributed high year-end catalog revenues. A second Japanese store was added in July 1993; both were jointly owned by the Seiyu, Ltd., and the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. By 1997 there were 11 L.L. Bean Japan stores. Meanwhile, in the fall of 1993, L.L. Bean launched its first line of children's clothing.
Late 20th Century: Countering Stagnant Sales with Numerous Initiatives
Sales continued to grow smartly through the 1995 fiscal year, reaching $976 million, although that figure was 3 percent below the company's target. In fact, for the remainder of the decade, revenues were essentially flat, increasing only to $1.08 billion in 1996 (the first time the billion dollar mark had been breached) and standing at $1.07 billion by 1999. Once again, L.L. Bean faced criticism for not changing with the times, both fashion-wise and otherwise. Particularly for women, the company's clothes were seen as "too" traditional and not fashionable enough. The company's venerable catalogs were being lost amid the myriad catalogs being mailed out to every American. In addition, the number of retailers offering casual outdoor clothing was on the rise, including such names as American Eagle Outfitters, the Gap, and REI. On top of all that, international sales were hurt by the sluggish Japanese economy and by the late 1990s Asian financial crisis.
L.L. Bean responded aggressively to its latest challenge with a number of initiatives. The company joined the e-commerce bandwagon in 1996 with the launching of online ordering via the llbean.com web site. Online sales grew rapidly. By 2000 the company was generating $164 million in revenues online, 15 percent of the total. Also in 1996, a new state-of-the-art order fulfillment center was opened in Freeport, boasting 650,000 square feet of space and the capacity to process 27 million items per year. With the new line of children's clothing proving to be a great success, L.L. Bean opened an L.L. Kids store adjacent to the flagship retail store in Freeport, in 1997. This 17,000-square-foot store featured a number of special attractions, including a two-story waterfall, a trout pond, a hiking trail, and an electronic rock climbing wall.
On the women's clothing front, L.L. Bean launched a new brand and a new catalog called Freeport Studio in 1999. The company's first affiliated brand, Freeport Studio featured more contemporary and fashion-forward casual clothes for baby boomer women. Finally, in 2000 L.L. Bean began what a number of industry analysts considered a long overdue expansion of its full-price retail stores. In July of that year, a 76,000-square-foot L.L. Bean store opened in McLean, Virginia, in a fancy suburban Washington mall. This beginning of a potentially nationwide retail expansion was aimed at increasing overall sales as well as lessening the company's dependence on catalog sales, which comprised 85 percent of the total. Two more stores, both much smaller at about 30,000 square feet each, subsequently opened in May 2001 (Columbia, Maryland) and August 2002 (Marlton, New Jersey).
Early 21st Century: New Leader, a Sales Turnaround, and a New Store-Building Drive
Results for the fiscal year ending in February 2001 seemed to indicate a company on the upswing. Revenues were up 4.5 percent for the year, to $1.11 billion, and L.L. Bean posted strong profits as a result of a two-year cost-cutting initiative that had shaved expenses by $30 million. Based on this stellar performance, the company board paid out bonuses to the entire workforce that year equivalent to 10 percent of annual pay; there had been no such bonuses, at one time a yearly occurrence, for four of the previous five years because of the company's struggles. With this good news as a backdrop, Gorman in April 2001 turned over the company reins to Christopher J. McCormick, an 18-year L.L. Bean veteran who had worked his way up from assistant advertising manager. McCormick was named president and CEO, while Gorman remained chairman. For the first time, day-to-day control of the firm passed to someone outside the Bean family, which continued to own L.L. Bean.
During the new leader's first year in charge, L.L. Bean suffered from the economic downturn, the aftereffects of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, and mild weather in late 2001 that depressed interest in cold weather items. As sales stagnated, the company retrenched. The number of catalogs produced were sharply reduced, including a 50 percent cut in the frequency of the Home catalog, down to six a year. Sales of the Freeport Studio line had been disappointing, and the line had reached only a slight level of profitability by 2000, so this venture was wound down in early 2002. Around this same time, the company laid off about 175 employees as part of a reorganization and streamlining of its merchandising and marketing departments. While placing a moratorium on new retail outlets in the United States so that the performance of the existing ones could be analyzed, L.L. Bean altered its approach to the Japanese market. After taking control of the ten retail stores in Japan in late 2000, the company in early 2002 launched a Japanese-language web site to augment its operations in that country. Back in Freeport, the children's clothing that had comprised the L.L. Kids store was shifted into the main store there, and the building that had housed L.L. Kids was turned into the L.L. Bean Hunting and Fishing Store.
Still seeking consistent sales growth and profitability in a tough retail economy, L.L. Bean made further workforce reductions in late 2002 and early 2003. Around 200 workers accepted a sweetened early retirement package, while 300 more were laid off, primarily hourly workers taking phone orders, filing orders, and processing returns. Over the next two years, L.L. Bean enjoyed strong sales growth, achieving record revenues of $1.4 billion for the fiscal year ending in February 2005. Profits were strong as well, and employees earned a 12.5 percent bonus that year. During the year, sales were driven in part by a harsh winter, while L.L. Bean also capitalized on the troubles of two chief competitors, Lands' End, Inc., and Eddie Bauer, Inc., by mailing out a record 290 million catalogs.
Several growth initiatives followed. In 2005 L.L. Bean opened a new customer service center in Bangor, Maine, and also converted a factory outlet store in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, into a full-price retail outlet. The company in early 2006 also began construction on a $35 million addition to its distribution center in Freeport, an expansion slated to add 330,000 square feet of space by the fall of 2007. In part this expansion was needed to support a new bricks-and-mortar push. To sustain its growth momentum, L.L. Bean knew that it had to beef up its retail store channel. Additional stores would enable the company to pursue the 50 percent of the population that were neither catalog nor online buyers.
Thus, in early 2006 L.L. Bean announced plans to more than double its number of retail outlets over the following 18 months. By September 2007, L.L. Bean outlets had opened in Burlington, Massachusetts; Center Valley, Pennsylvania; South Windsor, Connecticut; and Albany, New York. These stores were modeled after the L.L. Bean store in Marlton, New Jersey, which had proven much more successful than the initial stores opened outside Freeport. The new wave of stores were located in shopping centers with accessible parking rather than in malls like the previous ones, which made purchasing such items as kayaks more reasonable. While the stores offered a selection of items that mirrored what was offered in the catalogs and online, a greater emphasis was placed on clothing. In addition, the locations of the stores were selected for their proximity to both population centers and recreational areas where customers put L.L. Bean products to use. The proximity to the latter areas made it easier for the company to hold classes for its Outdoor Discovery Schools program, which enabled customers to learn how to use the products the stores offered. In other developments on the retail front, the company in 2006 opened another satellite store in Freeport, the L.L. Bean Bike, Boat & Ski Store, as well as four more stores in Japan.
As this bricks-and-mortar expansion progressed, L.L. Bean posted solid sales increases of 4 percent in fiscal 2005, to $1.47 billion, and 4.6 percent in 2006, to $1.54 billion. In December 2005 online sales became the company's top-selling channel for the first time on a monthly basis, and in fiscal 2006 the company reached another milestone when its web site was its most productive channel for the entire year. The web site recorded 73 million visits in 2006, an increase of 13 percent over the previous year.
Despite the rapidly growing online sales, the biggest growth push remained on the store side. By 2012, when L.L. Bean would celebrate its centenary, the company hoped to have as many as three dozen additional full-price retail outlets open in the United States. While most of these stores were slated for the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, L.L. Bean also planned to push westward into the Midwest as far as Minnesota and eventually to Colorado. Because of the company's expertise in products for colder-weather climates, a move into southern states was not in the offing. L.L. Bean simultaneously was seeking growth on the international front. It planned to open additional stores in Japan and was also exploring the possibility of entering other markets, including Canada, Central America, and China. In mid-2007 L.L. Bean was also in the beginning stages of developing a 700-acre outdoor adventure center in Freeport that would offer lodging, dining, and a variety of outdoor activities, such as hiking, biking, kayaking, archery, and fishing. In addition to whatever revenue it might generate on its own, this theme park-style tourist destination, which the company hoped to open by 2010, would offer the added bonus of driving more customers to L.L. Bean's flagship store in Freeport.
Principal Competitors
Eddie Bauer Holdings, Inc.; Lands' End, Inc.; Bass Pro Shops, Inc.; Cabela's Incorporated; Recreational Equipment, Inc.; The Timberland Company; The Orvis Company Inc.; Columbia Sportswear Company.
Further Reading
Abelson, Jenn, "Six Years Later, L.L. Bean Gets Back in Gear for Expansion," Boston Globe, September 1, 2006, p. A1.
Alpert, Mark, "Yuppies Want More Than Most Catalogues Offer," Fortune, October 22, 1990, p. 12.
Barry, William David, ed., L.L. Bean, Inc., Outdoor Sporting Specialties: A Company Scrapbook, 2nd ed., Freeport, Me.: L.L. Bean, Inc., 2002, 240 p.
Bartlett, Arthur, "The Discovery of L.L. Bean," Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1946.
Bean, L. L., My Story: The Autobiography of a Down-East Merchant, Freeport, Me.: n.p., 1962, 104 p.
"Bean Sticks to Its Backyard," Economist, August 4, 1990, p. 57.
Berman, Phyllis, "Trouble in Bean Land," Forbes, July 6, 1992, pp. 42-44.
Bonnin, Julie, "In L.L. Bean Store, the Catalog Fantasy Lives," Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 13, 1993, p. 1E.
Brown, Tom, "Worried About Burnout? Try Fly Fishing," Industry Week, January 17, 1994, p. 29.
Cyr, Diane, "Lean Times for Bean," Catalog Age, March 1998, pp. 1, 24.
Day, Sherri, "L.L. Bean Tries to Escape the Mail-Order Wilderness," New York Times, August 27, 2002, p. C1.
Ehrich, Thomas, "Homey Hustlers: Down-East Look Helps Main Outdoors-Store Build National Business," Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1973, p. 1.
Goad, Meredith, "L.L. Bean's New Leader 'Energized' by Job," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 24, 2001, p. 1A.
Gorman, Leon A., L.L. Bean, Inc.: Outdoor Specialties by Mail from Maine, New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1981, 23 p.
------, L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006, 304 p.
Hamilton, Martha M., "L.L. Bean Gets a Bigger Tent," Washington Post, July 29, 2000, p. E1.
Hays, Constance L., "L.L. Bean Casts About for Ways to Grow," New York Times, August 14, 1999, p. C1.
Holyoke, John, "Bean's Plans Hunting, Fishing Store," Bangor (Me.) Daily News, March 15, 2003, p. D1.
"Leon A. Gorman," Chain Store Age Executive, December 1992, p. 57.
Llosa, Patty de, "The National Business Hall of Fame (Leon Leonwood Bean)," Fortune, April 5, 1993, pp. 112, 114.
"Merchant of the Maine Woods," Time, February 17, 1967.
Miller, Paul, "Bean CEO's Agenda: Stores, Japan, the Web," Catalog Age, August 2001, p. 6.
Montgomery, M. R., "'In' from the Great Outdoors: Marketing the L.L. Bean Look," Boston Globe Magazine, December 27, 1981, pp. 11+.
------, In Search of L.L. Bean, Boston: Little, Brown, 1984, 242 p.
Moskowitz, Milton, et al., "L.L. Bean," in Everybody's Business: A Field Guide to the 400 Leading Companies in America, New York: Doubleday, 1990.
Murphy, Edward D., "Bean Expansion Banks on Kids," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, July 27, 1997, p. 1F.
------, "Bean 'Icon' Stepping Down," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 22, 2001, p. 1A.
------, "Bean Rolls Out Retail Strategy for Northeast," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, June 20, 2006, p. C1.
------, "L.L. Bean Agrees to $750,000 in Fines," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, August 31, 2000, p. 1A.
------, "L.L. Bean Going National with Retail Stores," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 22, 1999, p. 1A.
------, "L.L. Bean Layoff Plan Will Erase 300 Jobs," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, February 5, 2003, p. 1A.
------, "L.L. Bean: Leaving the Beaten Path," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 25, 2003, p. 1F.
------, "L.L. Bean Pulling Out of Sales Slump," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, December 16, 1999, p. 1A.
------, "L.L. Bean Retooling, to Cut Jobs," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, January 5, 2002, p. 1A.
------, "The Man Who Believed in Bean's," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, May 27, 2001, p. 1A.
------, "A New Style for Bean's," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, June 28, 1998, p. 1A.
------, "Workers to Share Bounty of Bean," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, March 10, 2007, p. A1.
Pile, Robert B., "L.L. Bean: The Outdoorsman Who Hated Wet Feet," in Top Entrepreneurs and Their Businesses, Minneapolis: Oliver Press, 1993, pp. 29-43.
Port, Otis, and Geoffrey Smith, "Beg, Borrow--and Benchmark," Business Week, November 30, 1992, pp. 74-75.
Pressman, Aaron, "Want Some Pajamas with That Kayak?: L.L. Bean Must Invigorate Brick-and-Mortar Sales, and Big-Ticket Items Aren't the Answer," Business Week, November 20, 2006, p. 76.
Rosenfield, James R., "In the Mail: L.L. Bean," Direct Marketing, February 1992, pp. 16-17.
Skrzycki, Cindy, "The Rustic Pitch Pays Off in Catalog Sales for L.L. Bean," U.S. News and World Report, March 25, 1985, pp. 61+.
Sly, Yolanda, "Bean's Looks to Broaden Market: Catalog Giant Opens D.C. Area Mall Store," Bangor (Me.) Daily News, July 28, 2000.
Sterngold, James, "Moose-Hunting in Japan: The Stylish Young May Never See Woods, but They'll Have Their L.L. Bean Hunting Gear," New York Times, February 28, 1993, p. V3.
Symonds, William C., "Paddling Harder at L.L. Bean," Business Week, December 7, 1998, p. 72.
Tedeschi, Bob, "L.L. Bean Beats the Current by Staying in Midstream," New York Times, September 20, 2000, p. H7.
Tedeschi, Mark, "LL.Business," Sporting Goods Business, August 7, 1997, p. 51.
Tucker, Frances Gaither, Seymour M. Zivan, and Robert C. Camp, "How to Measure Yourself Against the Best," Harvard Business Review, January/February 1987, pp. 8-10.
Turkel, Tux, "Bean Plans Freeport Expansion," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, September 22, 2005, p. A1.
------, "Bean Sees Theme Park on Horizon," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, June 5, 2007, p. A1.
------, "L.L. Bean Gears Up for Growth," Portland (Me.) Press Herald, October 15, 2004, p. A1.
Vannah, Thomas M., "A Most Bucolic Business," New England Business, May 1990, pp. 64+.
— Jay P. Pederson; Updated by David E. Salamie
